Northwest now is supported in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.

The phrase trailblazer is probably overused, but in the case of Karen Frazier, it most certainly is not for more than 50 years, Frazier served in government leadership roles, including almost three decades in the Washington State Legislature marches.

Women's History Month had carried.

Frazier is certainly a big part of that history here in Washington State, Karen Frazier looks back and ahead, and protesters hit the streets of Seattle, resisting Donald Trump's downsizing of the federal government.

Our Steve Higgins was there.

It's all next on northwest now.

You.

Nationally, Donald Trump was elected to downsize the federal government and bring Elon Musk in to find efficiencies.

But it was a narrow victory.

And in blue states like Washington, protesters are making the point that maybe more care should be taken when it comes to making rapid wholesale reductions in vital services.

The President's Day weekend saw protests up and down the Puget Sound region, and our Steve Higgins was in Seattle.

They gathered in drizzling rain, packed close together, carrying signs in hands, hearts on sleeves, reeling in shock after mass firings in the federal workforce.

If we don't hang together, what is going to happen to us?

Throngs packed the plaza outside the Henry and Jackson Federal Building in downtown Seattle, crowds spilling across the street to catch a bird's eye view.

Straining to hear speaker after speaker denounced an unprecedented culling of the federal workforce.

Trump administration is taking our government in a bad direction.

This demonstration at the Seattle Federal Building happening at several more scheduled in cities across Washington state and even more in cities all across the country this President's Day.

By noontime, hundreds had shown up carrying signs determined to be heard.

Demonstrations were seen Monday in Olympia.

Protesters think 500 rallied in Tacoma.

We have clean air, good medicine, safe airplanes, safe cars.

Water comes out of our faucets.

It's clean.

All these things come to us from federal and government employees.

I have heard from people who are seeing all of their fellow staff members disappear from the EPA, from the EOC.

The culling is part of President Trump and adviser Elon Musk's plan to shrink the budget.

Senator Maria Cantwell, his office says as many as 200,000 jobs may be lost, including if the Department of Education, energy, Health and Human Services and more national parks and the Forest Service combined terminated 4400 roles.

Trump's administration pledged wildland firefighters will be spared, but the Forest Service Council told the Spokesman-Review both firefighter and supporting jobs have been cut.

That puzzle spending and hiring freeze during prime training season has left workers in limbo.

Advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters told the paper.

Firefighters cannot do these jobs without them and the public needs to be concerned.

It's really overwhelming.

Demonstrators watch from afar, worrying the cuts shake the foundation of US democracy.

What feel solid now is a resolve for resistance.

Everything that we have in our lives now, be it schools and our Social security and all these things come to us from federal work.

And and it's easy to take it for granted.

And that's a danger.

We shouldn't do that.

If I'm not there for them, nobody's going to be there for me.

In Seattle, Steve, chicken's northwest now is Now, let's shift gears a little.

March is Women's History Month, and former state Senator Karen Frazier made a lot of history here in Washington.

Karen Frazier was born in Seattle and graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in accounting and public policy.

She moved to Lacey and was appointed to city council in 1973 and elected mayor in 1976.

Frazier then served as a Thurston County commissioner starting in 1981, and was elected to the House in 1989 and then the Senate in 1992, where she served for 24 years, retiring in 2017.

The following year, she was recognized in the Senate for all her years of service.

she is beloved by this body.

We did not have a chance to recognize her as she left us.

So today, Senator Frazier, thank you.

Thank you for all your years of dedication to your district, the state of Washington, and for all the bipartisan work you did for this body.

I thank you.

This is an honor to declare that, I am the number one Karen Fraser fan in the state of Washington, thank you for your kind and generous remarks.

And as each of you stood, I had to really look to see where you are, because everybody's changed seats.

So Karen Frazier.

Thanks so much for coming in northwest now.

Great to have a conversation with you about, your history and in the context of Women's History Month, you've been such a, a force here in Washington state for so long.

I'm glad we have this chance to converse a little bit.

Talk a little bit.

I want to start back in the 60s, and I've read some things you've written over the years.

Talk a little bit about your experience in the 60s, the activism, was that a seed that was planted in you, the emergence of women's rights, the desire to serve?

Are you a little bit of a product of the 60s, do you think in some ways?

Well, I think I'm a product of my own experiences, not so much of any particular time.

But as times come along, you get opportunities.

So, in terms of being interested in public service and government and women's rights, I first got interested in governmental affairs and public affairs with a course in high school called Contemporary Problems.

It was an elective, and that turned me on to how government works and the importance of advocacy.

And then I kind of accidentally got a summer filling job in majority's office in Los Angeles while I was visiting with my dad, got it through the unemployment office, and then, came back to here and, I went to University of Washington.

But, you know, as I grew up, I, I didn't my I have one brother and we were always treated as the children and no real difference.

And the school system, even though we know now that there is some institutional differences.

School system always treated the boys and the girls equally in Seattle, as far as I could tell, other than now we look back, no girls, sports and girls had the take home.

But but in the academic courses there, there was really no distinction.

Then I went to the University of Washington.

Really no distinction.

But then I after I graduated, I got a Ford Foundation Legislative internship with that, and that's where I started noticing distinctions.

I said, let me put a quick note in there.

And that was 1967.

You were a Ford Foundation legislative intern, a staffer on the House Health and Welfare committees.

And I wanted to ask you, you talk about this distinction that you gestured at.

What was Olympia like back then?

Was it a good old boys club and you had to find a way here in Washington state?

How did you navigate that?

And did you have a feeling at the time this was your thing?

Did you know?

Well, I was excited to have the opportunity and it actually changed my life.

I was thinking of becoming a professor of sociology, which had been my major.

But then I decided after working with the legislature, I wanted to work at the interface of, either elected or appointed officials and the public.

So but I was one of several Ford Foundation interns that session.

And by the way, that's before the legislature had much staff.

So we had real staff positions.

Yeah.

And the Ford Foundation wanted to encourage the legislatures, several of them, to staff up and be more competitive.

Vis-a-vis the executive branches.

Okay.

Which is interesting.

Now that you think of what's going on at the National, which is kind of the reverse.

So I was the only woman intern of our group, of course, and they wanted to assign me to a committee that had a woman chair.

Now, that would be unheard of.

Now, nobody that wouldn't be a consideration.

And they also wanted to assign me to a nice committee, whatever that was.

So I always wondered all during the session, now, what am I not learning if I'm with a nice committee and my colleagues are with other committees, what are they learning that I'm not learning.

So I hear I hear a little maybe not negative discrimination, but certainly paternalism wanting to protect you.

Take care of you a little bit, make sure you didn't get anything too ugly or whatever.

A little paternalism.

Yeah, probably that might be the term for it.

And then the internship extended beyond the session and it included working for an interim committee afterward.

And I heard, halfway through the, the, term on the interim committee that I had, quote, won them over.

They apparently didn't want a young woman on the staff.

You know, they were worried it would be disruptive in the office.

But I was just such a nose to the grindstone person, you know, give me an assignment.

I'd do it.

You weren't a troublemaker.

Another one?

No, no, I was serious and nose to the grindstone.

And so, the dean of the, political science, department at the University of Washington was in charge of these internships, and that's what he told me.

You won them over, vice.

You were named a city champion by the Washington associate of cities.

I want to have you talk a little bit about your experience in city and county government, where, in my humble opinion, where the rubber really hits the road.

You are boots on the ground when you're working in a small city or even or even at the county, the county level.

How did that inform or how did that experience inform your later work?

When you got to the legislature?

Oh, well, being in local government, I mean, it's a huge experience is very responsible.

It's very complex, high impact.

And once you've been in local government, you're sort of you never take the local government out of the person.

And if you want government to work well, you want local government to work well.

So yes, I'd always highly experienced my, legislative work.

So yes, I was the first woman to be on the Lacey City Council, the first woman mayor, the second, woman county commissioner in Thurston County, the first woman president of Washington State Association of Counties.

And it was all because I just, kind of noticed the grindstone and liked working with people.

Genuinely like working with people.

There's really no way to legislate this.

But in listening to you draw those connections and connect those dots, it almost seems like working in local government should be a requirement prior to going to the legislature.

And again, I know you can't do it, but in a perfect world, wouldn't that be how you did it?

You know, I, I basically agree with you.

It is a superb background for, becoming a legislator.

And among other things, it gives you backbone because you're right there on hard issues with people you live in the community with on different sides.

Let you have it.

Sometimes you you develop a backbone.

Yeah.

And a thick skin probably do.

Yeah.

In 1988, 1988, you end up back in the legislature.

How had things changed or had they changed at all between your Ford Foundation experience and now here you come as an elected in a completely different role.

Was there much of a change in Olympia?

Well, I had a different role, but but I also had lobbied the legislature on behalf of a nonprofit and had done legislative liaison work on behalf of some state agencies.

So I did have a state government career.

So but there were a lot more women.

And, and the state had grown a lot and become more complex.

And the, the whole legislative process was busier.

We went from, sessions every two years to every year because it was just more work to do on developing policy as the state kept growing and changing.

So follow me here.

I want to connect the dots now between your experience in the legislature, when maybe you first, in the 80s, early 90s, today's legislature, and the idea of collaborative leadership, which is something you've written about and, and spoken about working across the aisle, I have said on this program more than once that I feel like we've kind of devolved into this prison politics system where there's two extremes.

You got to pick a side issue.

There is no middle anymore.

It's it's warfare.

And there isn't a lot of, as your term says, collaborative leadership.

Am I overstating the case?

How do you view it?

What do you think's important that we think about in this environment?

Well, I don't think our legislature, is as bad as Congress.

I think Congress is close to impossible.

And I think a lot of people, they're more familiar with what happens in Congress.

So they assume that goes on at the state level.

But the state level is way more collaborative, and most bills that pass you can hardly get a bill passed unless it's it's got bipartisan support and of one way or another.

So but I think over time things have gotten the philosophies have gotten a little more separated.

Do you think the left and the right have gone too far?

In other words, when you evaluate both sides, do you say right are nuts?

The left okay, or do you think both sides have have gone too far to their respective corners?

How do you view that?

Well, I always try to judge things from my own experience.

And and actually nothing really passes unless it's somewhere in the middle of the bell shaped curve.

So things have to get worked out.

And almost every bill that's introduced gets amended.

The crazy bills don't go anywhere.

So I'd say take a look at what really passes the legislature.

In looking at some of your social media, obviously not a fan of Donald Trump.

And I don't want him to suck the air out of this conversation because this is a local program.

And and I want folks to get to know you.

With that said, here in Washington, with Democrats and firm control, what can blue states do?

Is there anything blue states can do to take the sharp edges off of Trumpism?

Or do you see what they've called this?

I think there's the term for it the great divide, the great separation, the great sorting is what they call it, where people are moving to places that are more in line with their political philosophies.

How do you see that going forward when you look at it kind of in the context of the history you've you've experienced?

Well, I think the biggest problem, is the, ignoring of the US Constitution, and that actually scares me.

And but we haven't seen how this is going to come out yet.

But it's really in the end, it's going to depend on the US Supreme Court.

Are they going to uphold the US Constitution or not?

And the other is how are the people in the quote red states?

Are they how when are they finally going to say we've had enough?

And I've seen charts, color coded charts of the United States?

that show where federal money is spent and there's more federal money spent in the, quote, red states than in the blue states.

The blue states are, you might say, contributory states.

So I also say never underestimate the desire of an elected official to get reelected.

So when it hurts the red states enough, something's going to happen.

That's a big question I want to ask you, too.

When you look back over your legislative history, you were a long term legacy senator.

That has its positives.

You got very familiar with policy.

You knew where the bodies were buried.

You knew who was who, what they were really saying.

A lot of advantages there.

By the same token, you can make some pretty compelling arguments about term limits, which have been tried in some states and in some jurisdictions.

What do you think about term limits when you hear people talk about that?

What we need is term limits.

What do you think about it?

Well, I, I don't think well, we have term limits.

We have term limits either every two years or every four years.

And if you look at the data on the Washington state Legislature, you know, there's a huge turnover.

You'd be surprised if you if you look at it, you don't need term limits.

And if we had term limits, it's kind of a guarantee people would get, you might say politically lazy.

Oh, well, that person isn't up for six years, so you wouldn't I don't think the candidates would get as much scrutiny.

So I think we're just fine the way we are.

There are term limits every four years and every two years people should be active in their democracy.

And again, I don't want Donald Trump to take all the oxygen out of this conversation.

But I would like your analysis on something.

Washington reliably blue state blue.

Got a little got a little bluer, actually, one of the one of the, if not the only state, one of the few states to actually do that in this past election, when you look nationally and if somebody said, Karen Frazier, I'm going to put a stethoscope around your neck and I'm going to make you the doctor for the Democratic Party, what's your diagnosis of what happened nationally and what would your prescription be to revive the health of the patient, if that patient is the Democratic Party?

Well, I think over to analyze it as a doctor, over the long term, I think the Democratic Party hasn't paid enough attention to rural issues.

I think the Republicans would agree with that.

And, and so you've seen in the state of Washington, some of the areas go from kind of conservative D to R, and it's part of, I think the leadership not paying enough and the party itself not paying enough attention to rural issues.

Are there are there constituencies that the party paid too much attention to?

In other words, there was the case you made about not paying enough to rural.

Did they pay too much to anything?

I don't know, there's so many issues.

Yeah.

And, but I think there has been under attention to rural issues and in the long term.

And that slowly plays out in who gets elected.

Let's talk about some of the, I have them labeled here, and I don't mean it to be derogatory, but pet projects.

There's nothing wrong with having pet projects.

I have pet projects.

Talk a little bit about your pet projects, and I have them listed down here, water management being one of them.

I focused a lot as a general assignment reporter early in my career in Yakima and Indiana and places that I worked as a young person on water issues.

I really kind of made that my thing because I saw the connections there between the economy and all the things.

Why?

Why for you what what are what about water issues attracted you and what got you so involved over a long period of time in both state and local government?

Well, thank you for noticing that.

First of all, yes, I have quite an involvement with water policy, but I didn't seek it out.

It came to me when I entered the legislature.

I had just finished 15 years as a local government elected official, which is there's a lot of land use and environmental regulation and that.

And I was burned out and I didn't want to do anything on that.

So but then when I got to the house, they wanted me to be on the environment committee because I knew something about it.

Then while I got to the Senate, they wanted me to chair the environment Committee because I knew something about it.

So the water issues got assigned to my committee and I slowly learned about them.

You have to learn about all the laws and the policy issues.

Oh yeah, and tribal treaties, which are in the component that a lot of people don't know much about.

So they came to me and it was one of the most difficult, maybe the most difficult issue area I worked on.

But I developed, quite a perspective on the laws and you might say ethics about water policy and values relating to water policy.

And I still care intensely and I've even been involved with the Thurston County League of Women Voters study on water resources in Thurston County.

So I'm continuing my interest talk a little bit about your involvement, with the Billy Frank, with the wildlife refuge and then the squally River and salmon restoration.

I'd like, northwest now, the program I do is devoted a lot of time and resources to that over the years.

I'd like I'd like folks to hear what you have done over a period of time and talk a little bit about, your work on those areas that people might be familiar with.

Oh, okay.

Thank you.

I was fundamentally involved in the planning for that in the Squali River basin, which includes the delta and the river system.

That was when I was a county commissioner.

And at that time, then State Representative Jennifer Belcher got a bill passed calling for a planning process for Mountain to Sound along.

You know, the whole river basin called for a Department of Ecology to appoint a policy committee and a technical advisory committee.

So, since I was a county commissioner from that portion of Thurston County, they asked me if I would serve.

And then just before the whole thing started, they called and asked if I would chair it.

So I ended up chairing this task force.

And, it was it was at first it was exceptionally strenuous because a lot of the people who were appointed to the task force represented constituencies in the basin that were paranoid about the planning idea.

They were worried about property confiscation, eminent domain and the new regulations and new level of government.

Maybe some fees.

They just were paranoid about it, didn't want this whole task force to to operate.

And so the first few meetings were exceptionally difficult.

And then, that historic moment came when one day, Billy Frank, who was one of the members of the task force, he said, you know, we the tribe we want warehouse are to, and the forestry to succeed in the basin.

We want agriculture to succeed in the basin.

You know, we want fish to succeed in the basin, but we want other people to succeed in the basin, the small towns and so, so forth.

And so that kind of turned the corner and helped everybody get a new attitude about working together.

And then we, we, work together for about a year and a half, touring everything, chatting as we did, getting well acquainted.

And people really respected each other.

They had their own opinions.

And interestingly, we voted on everything.

Yeah.

When you hear about these processes, you think it's a consensus process.

This was a compromise process.

Yeah.

And it it worked.

And now so much of that basin is protected almost from source down to the estuary.

Landowners have come together over time.

Sales have happened.

I mean, and a lot of that has been put into a protected status, due to your work.

Well, the important thing is, the people bought into the plan, and we created a, ongoing, a watershed council.

And that watershed council has been meeting for 40 years or more.

And so the plan is still alive.

It wasn't the plan that went on the shelf.

It wasn't a plan that just went into the regulatory process.

People buy into it.

And there, you know, so many volunteers and people, people support it because they want to last 60s here, I want to talk about legacy.

You can walk the Karen Fisher Woodland Trail now in late in Lacey.

Hope you're around.

And for a long time working on on issues.

What would you like your legacy?

How would you like to be remembered?

What do you want your legacy to be?

Oh, well, thank you.

I was most honored to, have the Karen Fraser Woodland Trail, designated.

It was a thank you for.

I'm Olympian Lacey, for my years of contribution to the area.

So I, saw the question ahead of time.

So I have, I think, four things.

One is to promote a healthy democracy.

I think that's probably number one.

That's always what I've tried to do.

To promote equal rights and opportunities and respect for every person on the earth and to, appreciate, have appreciation for the environment, both for itself and for the fundamental relationship of people and the environment.

There are too many people who say people in the environment, they're separate.

They're not.

We all breathe the air, we all drink the water.

We all live.

And so forth.

And, and then finally, this kind of wraps it up to, to promote strong communities.

Karen Frazier, thanks so much for coming to northwest.

Now.

Thank you.

The theme for Women's History Month 2025 is Women Educating and Inspiring the Generations.

The Bottom line Karen Frazier lived out that theme, and we thank her for stopping by northwest now.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking.

You can find this program on the web at kbtc.org.

Stream it through the PBS app or listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

That's going to do it for this edition of northwest.

Now until next time, I'm Tom Layson, Thanks for watching.

You.